????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????—— 選自Rediff.com 網(wǎng)站節(jié)選（吉瑪譯)

Being a genius is different than merely being supersmart. Smart people are a dime a dozen, and many of them don’t amount to much. What matters is creativity, the ability to apply imagination to almost any situation.

成為天才與僅僅成為聰明人是不一樣的。聰明的人比比皆是的，他們中的許多人并沒(méi)有多有出息。重要的是創(chuàng)造力，把想象力運(yùn)用到任何情況的能力。

Take Benjamin Franklin. He lacked the analytic processing power of a Hamilton and the philosophical depth of a Madison. Yet with little formal education, Franklin taught himself to become the American Enlightenment’s best inventor, diplomat, scientist, writer and business strategist. He proved, by flying a kite, that lightning is electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He devised clean-burning stoves, charts of the Gulf Stream, bifocal glasses, enchanting musical instruments and America’s unique style of homespun humor.

以本杰明·富蘭克林舉例。他缺乏漢密爾頓的分析處理能力和麥迪遜的哲學(xué)深度。然而，在沒(méi)有受過(guò)正規(guī)教育的情況下，富蘭克林自學(xué)成為美國(guó)啟蒙運(yùn)動(dòng)的最佳發(fā)明家、外交家、科學(xué)家、作家和商業(yè)戰(zhàn)略家。他通過(guò)放風(fēng)箏證明了閃電是電，他發(fā)明了一根棍子來(lái)馴服它。他發(fā)明了清潔爐灶、墨西哥灣流的圖表、雙焦眼鏡、迷人的樂(lè)器以及美國(guó)獨(dú)特的樸素幽默風(fēng)格。

Albert Einstein followed a similar path. He was slow in learning to speak as a child–so slow that his parents consulted a doctor. The family maid dubbed him “der Depperte,” the dopey one, and a relative referred to him as “almost backwards.” He also harbored a cheeky rebelliousness toward authority, which led one schoolmaster to send him packing and another to amuse history by declaring that he would never amount to much. These traits made Einstein the patron saint of distracted schoolkids everywhere.

阿爾伯特·愛(ài)因斯坦也有類似的經(jīng)歷。當(dāng)他還是個(gè)孩子的時(shí)候，他學(xué)習(xí)說(shuō)話的速度很慢，以至于他的父母咨詢了醫(yī)生。她的家庭女仆給他起了個(gè)綽號(hào)叫“德伯蒂”，遲鈍的人，一個(gè)親戚叫認(rèn)為他“幾乎是倒過(guò)來(lái)的”。他還懷有一種對(duì)權(quán)威頑固叛逆，這導(dǎo)致一位校長(zhǎng)讓他收拾東西走人，另一位校長(zhǎng)則宣稱他永遠(yuǎn)不可能有出息。這些特點(diǎn)使愛(ài)因斯坦到哪都成為分心的學(xué)生的代表。

But Einstein’s contempt for authority also led him to question received wisdom in ways that well-trained acolytes in the academy never contemplated. And his slow verbal development allowed him to observe with wonder the everyday phenomena that others took for granted. “The ordinary adult never bothers his head about the problems of space and time,” Einstein once explained. “But I developed so slowly that I began to wonder about space and time only when I was already grown up.” So it was that in 1905, while he was toiling away as a third-class examiner in the Swiss patent office after graduating fourth out of the five students in his class at the Zurich Polytechnic, Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the universe by coming up with the two pillars of contemporary physics: relativity theory and quantum theory. And he did so by rejecting one of the basic assumptions that Isaac Newton made at the beginning of The Principia, that time marches along, second by second, irrespective of how we observe it. Today Einstein’s name and likeness–the wild halo of hair, the piercing eyes–are synonymous with genius.

但是，愛(ài)因斯坦對(duì)權(quán)威的蔑視也讓他質(zhì)疑了學(xué)術(shù)界公認(rèn)的從未質(zhì)疑的訓(xùn)練有素的助手們的智慧。他緩慢的語(yǔ)言發(fā)展使他能夠觀察并思考別人認(rèn)為理所當(dāng)然的日?，F(xiàn)象。愛(ài)因斯坦曾解釋說(shuō):“普通的成年人從被空間和時(shí)間的問(wèn)題而困擾?！薄暗俏野l(fā)展得很慢，直到我長(zhǎng)大了才開始思考空間和時(shí)間?！彼?在1905年,在他以第四名的成績(jī)從蘇黎世理工畢業(yè)之后，他作為三等審查員在瑞士專利局揮埋頭苦干,愛(ài)因斯坦徹底改變了我們對(duì)宇宙的理解,提出現(xiàn)代物理學(xué)的兩大支柱:相對(duì)論和量子理論。他拒絕了艾薩克·牛頓在《原理》開頭提出的一個(gè)基本假設(shè)，無(wú)論我們?nèi)绾斡^察它， 時(shí)間在一秒一秒的流逝。今天，愛(ài)因斯坦的名字和肖像——野暈的頭發(fā)，敏銳的眼睛——是天才的代名詞。

Then there’s Steve Jobs. Much like Einstein, who would pull out his violin to play Mozart when he was stymied in pursuit of theories (he said it helped him reconnect with the harmonies of the cosmos), Jobs believed that beauty mattered, that the arts, sciences and humanities should all connect. After dropping out of college, Jobs audited classes on calligraphy and dance before seeking spiritual enlightenment in India–which meant that every product he made, from the Macintosh to the iPhone, had a beauty that was almost spiritual in nature, unlike the products of his competitors.

還有史蒂夫·喬布斯。就像愛(ài)因斯坦一樣，當(dāng)他在追求理論遇到阻礙時(shí)，他會(huì)拿拉出他的小提琴演奏莫扎特的音樂(lè)，(他說(shuō)這有助于他重新與宇宙和諧聯(lián)系起來(lái))，喬布斯認(rèn)為美麗在于，將藝術(shù)、科學(xué)和人文學(xué)科都緊密聯(lián)系。從大學(xué)輟學(xué)后，喬布斯在印度尋求精神啟蒙之前，去上書法和舞蹈課--這意味著他所做的每一件產(chǎn)品，不像競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手的產(chǎn)品，從麥金塔電腦到蘋果手機(jī)，都有一種近乎自然精神的美。

Studying such people led me to Leonardo da Vinci, who I believe is history’s greatest creative genius. Again, that doesn’t mean he was the smartest person. He did not have the superhuman theoretical brainpower of a Newton or an Einstein, or the math skills of his friend Luca Pacioli.

研究這些人讓我知道了列奧納多·達(dá)·芬奇，我認(rèn)為他是歷史上最偉大的創(chuàng)造天才。再次聲明，這并不意味著他是最聰明的人。他沒(méi)有牛頓或愛(ài)因斯坦的超人般的理論頭腦，也沒(méi)有他的朋友盧卡·帕喬利的數(shù)學(xué)能力。

But he could think like an artist and a scientist, which gave him something more valuable: the ability to visualize theoretical concepts. Pacioli may have extended Euclid’s theories to produce influential studies on mathematical perspective and geometric proportions. But da Vinci’s illustrations–of rhombicuboctahedrons and dozens of other multifaceted geometric shapes–brought it to life, which was ultimately more important. Over the years, he did the same thing for geography (through the aerial three-dimensional maps he drew for warlord Cesare Borgia), anatomy (through his memorable drawings of Vitruvian Man and a fetus in the womb) and more–all while creating some of the world’s greatest works of art.

但他可以像藝術(shù)家和科學(xué)家那樣思考，這賦予了他更有價(jià)值的東西:形象化理論概念的能力。帕喬利可能擴(kuò)展了歐幾里德的理論，從而產(chǎn)生了具有影響的對(duì)數(shù)學(xué)觀點(diǎn)和幾何比例的研究。但是達(dá)·芬奇的插圖—菱形以及幾十個(gè)其他的幾何形狀—賦予了生命，這是至關(guān)重要。多年來(lái)，他在其他方面也同樣做了貢獻(xiàn)：地理學(xué)(通過(guò)他繪制的空中三維地圖，他畫出軍閥愷撒·博爾吉亞)，解剖學(xué)(通過(guò)令人難忘的維特魯威人和子宮中的胎兒畫作)，等等，同時(shí)創(chuàng)造了一些世界上最偉大的藝術(shù)品。

Like Franklin, da Vinci was largely self-taught. He was born out of wedlock, which meant that he could not follow in the family tradition of being a notary and was not eligible to attend one of the “Latin schools” that taught the classics and humanities to well-groomed young men of the early Renaissance. And like Einstein, da Vinci had a problem with authority. He often seemed defensive about being an “unlettered man,” as he dubbed himself with some irony, but had little patience for the “foolish folk” who thought less of him. “They strut about puffed up and pompous, decked out and adorned not with their own labors, but by those of others,” he wrote in one of his notebooks.

和富蘭克林一樣，達(dá)芬奇也是自學(xué)成才。他是位婚生子，這意味著他不能繼承家族傳統(tǒng)的公證，也沒(méi)有資格參加一所“拉丁學(xué)?！保搶W(xué)校是教古典文學(xué)和人文學(xué)科，培養(yǎng)文藝復(fù)興時(shí)期早期的年輕男子。和愛(ài)因斯坦一樣，達(dá)芬奇也有權(quán)威的問(wèn)題。他常常為自己是一個(gè)“未受教育的人”而辯護(hù)，他給自己起了個(gè)諷刺的綽號(hào)，但對(duì)那些比他還沒(méi)有想法得“愚蠢的人”卻沒(méi)有耐心?！八麄冎焊邭鈸P(yáng)，裝扮華麗，不用自己的勞動(dòng)，而是用別人的勞動(dòng)來(lái)裝飾自己，”他在自己的筆記本上寫道。

So it was that da Vinci learned to challenge conventional wisdom, ignoring the dusty scholasticism and medieval dogmas that had accumulated in the millennia since the decline of classical science. He was, by his own words, a disciple of experience and experiment–“Leonardo da Vinci, disscepolo della sperientia,” he once signed himself. That approach to problem-solving was nothing short of revolutionary, foreshadowing the scientific method developed more than a century later by Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei. And it elevated da Vinci beyond even the smartest of his peers. “Talent hits a target that no one else can hit,” wrote the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. “Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

因此，達(dá)·芬奇學(xué)會(huì)了挑戰(zhàn)傳統(tǒng)智慧，忽略了自古典科學(xué)衰落以來(lái)數(shù)千年來(lái)積累起來(lái)的枯燥的經(jīng)學(xué)和中世紀(jì)教條。用他自己的話來(lái)說(shuō)，他是一個(gè)經(jīng)驗(yàn)和實(shí)驗(yàn)的信徒——“Leonardo da Vinci，disolo della speri，”他曾經(jīng)簽名。這種解決問(wèn)題的方法完全是革命性的，它預(yù)示了一個(gè)世紀(jì)后弗朗西斯·培根和伽利略·伽利雷發(fā)明的科學(xué)方法。這使達(dá)·芬奇甚至超越了最聰明的同齡人。德國(guó)哲學(xué)家叔本華寫道:“天才擊中了一個(gè)無(wú)人能擊中的目標(biāo)?！薄疤觳艙糁辛藙e人看不到的目標(biāo)?！?/p>

Like Einstein, da Vinci’s most inspiring trait was his curiosity. The thousands of pages of his notebooks that survive sparkle with questions he listed to pursue. He wanted to know what caused people to yawn, how they walked on ice in Flanders, methods for squaring a circle, what makes the aortic valve close, how light was processed in the eye and what that meant for the perspective in a painting. He instructed himself to learn about the placenta of a calf, the jaw of a crocodile, the muscles of a face, the light of the moon and the edges of shadows. “Describe the tongue of the woodpecker,” he wrote in one of my favorite entries. Da Vinci’s grand and noble ambition was to know everything there was to know about everything that could possibly be known–including our cosmos, and how we fit in.

和愛(ài)因斯坦一樣，達(dá)芬奇最令人鼓舞的特質(zhì)是他的好奇心。他成千上萬(wàn)頁(yè)筆記本,因羅列著他說(shuō)追求的問(wèn)題而熠熠生輝。他想知道是人們?yōu)槭裁创蚬?，他們?nèi)绾卧诜鹛m德斯的冰上行走，如何形成一個(gè)圓圈，什么使主動(dòng)脈瓣關(guān)閉，眼睛如何處理光線以及從繪畫的角度來(lái)說(shuō)這意味著什么。他去了解小牛的胎盤、鱷魚的下顎、臉的肌肉、月亮的光和陰影的邊緣?！懊枋鲎哪绝B的舌頭，”他在我最喜歡的作品中寫道。達(dá)·芬奇?zhèn)ゴ蠖绺叩谋ж?fù)是要知道所有可能知道的一切，包括我們的宇宙，以及我們?nèi)绾稳谌肫渲小?/p>

Much of his curiosity was applied to topics that most of us have outgrown even noticing. Take the blue sky, for example. We see it almost every day, but not since childhood have most of us stopped to wonder why it is that color. Da Vinci did. He wrote page after page in his notebook exploring how the scattering of light by water vapor creates various misty or vibrant shades of blue. Einstein puzzled over that question too: building on Lord Rayleigh’s work, he worked out the mathematical formula for light-spectrum scattering.

他的很多好奇心都被應(yīng)用到我們大多數(shù)人甚至都沒(méi)有注意到的話題上。以藍(lán)天為例。我們幾乎每天都能看到它，但從孩提時(shí)代起，我們大多數(shù)人就不再思考為什么它是那種顏色。達(dá)·芬奇就思考。他在他的筆記本上寫了一頁(yè)又一頁(yè)，研究了水汽的散射如何創(chuàng)造出各種模糊或充滿生氣的藍(lán)色。愛(ài)因斯坦也對(duì)這個(gè)問(wèn)題感到困惑:在瑞利勛爵的作品基礎(chǔ)上，他計(jì)算出了光譜散射的數(shù)學(xué)公式。

Da Vinci never stopped observing. When he visited the moats surrounding Milan’s castle, he looked at the four-wing dragonflies and noticed how the wing pairs alternated in motion. When he walked around town, he tracked how the facial expressions of people talking related to their emotions. When he saw birds, he noted which ones moved their wings faster on the upswing than on the downswing, and which ones did the opposite. When he poured water into a bowl, he watched how the eddies swirled.

達(dá)·芬奇從未停止過(guò)觀察。當(dāng)他參觀了環(huán)繞米蘭城堡的護(hù)城河時(shí)，他看到了四翼的蜻蜓，并注意到它們的翅膀是如何交替運(yùn)動(dòng)的。當(dāng)他在鎮(zhèn)上四處走動(dòng)時(shí)，他會(huì)追蹤人們的面部表情與他們的情緒有何關(guān)系。當(dāng)他看到鳥的時(shí)候，他注意到那些鳥在上升的時(shí)候比在下降的時(shí)候更快地移動(dòng)它們的翅膀，而有些是相反的。當(dāng)他把水倒進(jìn)碗里的時(shí)候，他看到漩渦是如何打旋。

Much like Franklin–who sailed for England as a teenage runaway and later measured the temperature of the ocean currents, thereby becoming the first person to chart the Gulf Stream accurately–da Vinci could not resist chasing and studying whirlwinds of air when he was out on a ride.

就像富蘭克林一樣，他在十幾歲的時(shí)候乘船逃亡去了英國(guó)，后來(lái)又測(cè)量了洋流的溫度，因此成為了第一個(gè)精確繪制墨西哥灣流的人。達(dá)芬奇外出騎行時(shí)，忍不住要去追逐和研究空氣的漩渦。

Those observations led him to create some of his most brilliant strokes of art, from the ripples of the River Jordan around the ankles of Jesus in the Baptism of Christ to the disturbingly powerful Deluge drawings. He was also the first person to explain how the eddies of blood from the heart cause the aortic valve to close. And his drawing of Vitruvian Man–a work of anatomical exactitude combined with stunning beauty–became the preeminent icon of the connection of art and science.

這些觀察使他創(chuàng)作出了一些他最輝煌的藝術(shù)作品，從基督的洗禮中約旦河的漣漪圍繞著耶穌的腳踝，到令人不安的強(qiáng)力洪水圖。他也是第一個(gè)解釋心臟的血液漩渦是如何導(dǎo)致主動(dòng)脈瓣關(guān)閉的。他對(duì)維特魯威人的描繪——解剖學(xué)上的精雕細(xì)琢，伴隨著令人驚嘆的美麗——成為了藝術(shù)與科學(xué)結(jié)合的卓越標(biāo)志。

Some people are geniuses in a particular field, like Leonhard Euler in math or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in music. But to me the most interesting geniuses are those who see patterns across nature’s infinite beauties. Da Vinci’s brilliance spanned multiple disciplines. He peeled flesh off the faces of cadavers, delineated the muscles that move the lips and then painted the world’s most memorable smile. He studied human skulls, made layered drawings of the bones and teeth and conveyed the skeletal agony of St. Jerome in St. Jerome in the Wilderness. He explored the mathematics of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea and produced magical illusions of changing visual perspectives in The Last Supper.

有些人是某個(gè)領(lǐng)域的天才，比如數(shù)學(xué)天下的萊昂哈德·歐拉，或者音樂(lè)天才莫扎特。但對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)，最有趣的天才是那些從自然界無(wú)限美麗中看到圖案的人。達(dá)芬奇的才華跨越了多個(gè)學(xué)科。他剝掉臉上的皮膚，勾勒出嘴唇的肌肉，然后畫出世界上最令人難忘的微笑。他研究了人類的頭骨，繪制了骨骼和牙齒的層狀圖，并在荒野中傳達(dá)了圣杰羅姆的骨骼痛苦。他探索了光學(xué)的數(shù)學(xué)原理，展示了光線如何撞擊角膜，并在最后的晚餐中表現(xiàn)出改變視覺(jué)視角的神奇幻想。

?There have been, of course, many other insatiable polymaths, and the Renaissance produced other Renaissance men. But none painted the Mona Lisa, much less did so at the same time as producing unsurpassed anatomy drawings based on multiple dissections, coming up with schemes to divert rivers, explaining the reflection of light from the earth to the moon, opening the still-beating heart of a butchered pig to show how ventricles work, designing musical instruments, choreographing pageants, using fossils to dispute the biblical account of the Deluge and then drawing a deluge. Da Vinci was a genius, but not simply because he was smart. He was, more important, the epitome of the universal mind, the person most curious about more things than anyone else in history.

當(dāng)然，也有許多其他不知足的博學(xué)，文藝復(fù)興造就了其他文藝復(fù)興人。但沒(méi)有人能畫蒙娜麗莎，更不用說(shuō)畫出了基于多重解剖的未被超越的解剖圖, 提出河流改道方案, 解釋了光從地球到月球的反射, 剖開屠宰豬仍在跳動(dòng)心臟揭示心室的工作原理,設(shè)計(jì)樂(lè)器、編排游行,使用化石爭(zhēng)論圣經(jīng)記載的洪水,然后畫洪水。達(dá)芬奇是個(gè)天才，但不只是因?yàn)樗斆?。更重要的是，他是宇宙意識(shí)的縮影，他是歷史上最好奇的人。

Link: What Makes a Genius The World's Greatest Minds Have One Thing in Common